Cucumber Slice by Slice

A Cucumber.js Tutorial and example project. Uses Cucumber.js (obviously) in a Node.js environment. Explores BDD in general.

Table of Contents generated with DocToc

• Installation
• Usage
• Aims
• BDD and Cucumber.js Overview
• Tutorial
  • Our System (Calculator)
  • First feature: Addition (aka Stage 1)
    • Features
    • Step Definitions
    • World
    • Calculator Model
    • Stage 1 Comments
  • Second feature: Subtraction (aka Stage 2)
    • Features
    • Step Definitions
    • World
    • Calculator Model
    • Stage 2 Comments
  • Third feature: Chaining multiple operations (aka Stage 3)
    • Features
    • Step Definitions
    • World
    • Calculator Model
    • Stage 3 Comments
• Final Comments

Installation

  $ git clone https://github.com/js-republic/cucumber-slice-by-slice.git
  $ cd cucumber-slice-by-slice
  $ npm install

Usage

From the cucumber-slice-by-slice directory

  $ npm test

You should see something like this to know that Cucumber.js has been properly installed by NPM and that the tests can run

  .....................................

  9 scenarios (9 passed)
  37 steps (37 passed)

Aims

To get a better understanding of:

1. Cucumber.js
2. Behaviour Driven Development (BDD)
3. How to implement your own scenario (Stage 3)

BDD and Cucumber.js Overview

By no means is this meant to be an exhaustive tutorial on BDD. But basically, the hint is in the name...

BDD is about testing the behaviour of the system. Well, first agreeing and specifying the behaviour, and then testing the system's conformance to this desired behaviour. The idea is that these specifications are things that can be generated with, and understood by, the key stakeholders in the system. Not just developers, but other humans as well. It was borne out of Test Driven Development (TDD), and conceptually it's specifying the system with, and testing the system against, a higher level specification.

Basically you specify the behaviour of the system as some nice natual(ish) language specifications. These are called stories (or features in cucumber.js, and I'll call them features here). The features are composed of scenarios. Scenarios are composed of [potentially reusable] steps. And we write glue from these steps to drive our system code and test it.

At least that's how I think about it. If you look at a definition you'll read something like this:

BDD is a second-generation, outside-in, pull-based, multiple-stakeholder, multiple-scale, high-automation, agile methodology. It describes a cycle of interactions with well-defined outputs, resulting in the delivery of working, tested software that matters.

Tutorial

The tutorial is split into three stages. Each builds on the former and adds more complexity (to the tests and to the system). However, at all stages we are working with the same directory structure:

cucumber-slice-by-slice/
|- features/             # cucumber.js *.feature files (gherkin syntax)
   |- support/           # cucumber.js World definition + step definitions
|- models/               # the code for the "calculator system". The actual system code to be tested
|- app.js                # ordinarily the main file for a Node.js project (unused in TuteCumber)
|- README.md             # you're staring at it

Thanks to the alphabetical gods (i.e. blind luck) the order of files here is the order in which we'd introduce them:

• first, in cucumber.js, features are written using gherkin syntax (very free flowing natural language)
• then, the features are broken down into steps, which are defined in the step definitions
• then, the steps reference a World object which is the context which drives the...
• actual code to be tested (the models here)

Note: cucumber.js automatically looks in, and expects content to be inside a features/ directory, so you don't actually have to configure anything, just use this structure.

Our System (Calculator)

As much as I hate trivial examples, the "system" that this tute uses is a simple calculator - stupidly simple actually; think addition and subtraction only. But it does provide enough "meat" to see how BDD can be used to evolve your system, and how the addition of new features in Cucumber drives this process.

First feature: Addition (aka Stage 1)

Now, the first stage of the system sees us defining our first feature - addition. Calculators should let us add numbers. But first, let's update our code to the relevant release / commit:

  $ git checkout Stage1
  $ npm test

The last command runs the tests again and this time we should be testing a smaller number of scenarios (indicating the code has been "reverted" back to the first stage where we only had a smaller number of tests defined). You should see something like:

  ......

  2 scenarios (2 passed)
  6 steps (6 passed)

Features

The first file to look at is the features/Feature1.feature file (later I renamed this to addition.feature, but at this point I had it unimaginatively named). You can see that we have some basic scenarios here for this feature. The scenarios follow a given-when-then template:

• Given: initial context or preconditions
• When: events that occur
• Then: expected outcomes

You'll see that at this stage, the addition feature just defines 2 simple (and obvious) scenarios.

Step Definitions

Now we want to define the steps. Our steps are in features/support/steps.js. However, if we had only written the .feature file, and nothing else, when we tried to run the tests we'd see something like this (you can test this out by clearing out the step definitions file and running the npm test):

UUUUUU

2 scenarios (2 undefined)
6 steps (6 undefined)

You can implement step definitions for undefined steps with these snippets:

Given("the calculator is clear", function(callback) {
  // Write code here that turns the phrase above into concrete actions
  callback.pending();
});

When("I add {int} and {int}", function(arg1, arg2, callback) {
  // Write code here that turns the phrase above into concrete actions
  callback.pending();
});

Then("the result should be {int}", function(arg1, callback) {
  // Write code here that turns the phrase above into concrete actions
  callback.pending();
});

What this is telling us is that although we've defined the feature, there's no step definitions (yet!). Helpfully cucumber.js gives us the templates for these step definitions (in JavaScript).

In essence, this file is where we have the Given/When/Then definitions. Inside these definitions, we call methods on the World object (e.g. this.clearCalculator() or thissetArguments(arg1, arg2)). In particular, in the Then definition, we perform a test.

World

According to the cucumber.js website, the World object is:

World is a class destined to be used in step definitions

Basically, inside our World definition, (features/support/world.js), we (finally?) reference our actual code to be tested. In this case our calculator (Calc) object (more on this below). We call methods on our calculator, like this.calc.clearCalculator() and this.calc.add() from those "utility properties" mentioned above.

Calculator Model

Finally, you can see the definition of our actual "system code", the definition of our Calculator class. This is defined in the models/calc.js file. All we do is store the arguments when they are set, and use them when we want to add.

Stage 1 Comments

We can see that at this stage, the models/calc.js class is super simple. Tragically simple really. In fact, what is interesting here is that although we "knew" from specification in natural language that the calculator should have a concept of being cleared, in order to pass our tests we don't really have to do anything in the clearCalculator method. We'll discuss this and come back to it more in Stage 2 and 3.

Second feature: Subtraction (aka Stage 2)

What goes up must come down, right? So the next stage sees us adding a feature specification for subtraction. As before, let's first update our code to this stage.

  $ git checkout Stage2
  $ npm test

You should see something like:

  .........
  
  3 scenarios (3 passed)
  9 steps (9 passed)

More tests defined and passing now.

Features

At this stage we define our new subtraction feature in the features/subtraction.feature file. It is very similar to the addition feature previously discussed so not much more to discuss.

Step Definitions

The step definitions file, features/support/steps.js, now includes [only] one more step. This is because the Given and the Then steps can be re-used from our previous work, so all we need is one new When handling the subtraction.

But, this is where things start to get really interesting...

Now that we are considering more than just addition, we actually need to revisit the way these steps work. Previously the Then step called the this.add method on the World directly. But now that we want to re-use this step from our subtraction scenario, it makes no sense at all to call this.add here. It was perfectly reasonable back in Stage 1 to do this, and if that's the only feature our system had, that would be all well and good. But it's not the only feature any more.

So what we need to do is request some this.result from the calculator in the Then step (regardless of whether we were adding or subtracting), and we pull back the this.add and this.subtract method calls into their respective @When steps.

This drives some interesting and appropriate change "downstream" throughout the rest of the system.

World

Our World - features/support/world.js - just has one simple this.subtract method added.

However the downstream refactoring we mentioned above flows through the World as well. Now we don't need / want to return a value from the this.add and the new this.subtract methods. So we don't. And we also want to define some this.result method that requests the current result from the calculator (this.calc.result()).

At this point we're just "specifying" that this is what would make sense, to interact with the calculator in this way. We don't care at this stage how the actual calculator model must change to support this. Outside-in.

Calculator Model

The calculator model - models/calc.js - now has to be refactored as well, as we'd expect, to support our new specification.

Ultimately we've made the calculator a little more realistic. Instead of the this.add and this.subtract methods directly returning the value, they more appropriately just perform the addition or subtraction operation, and store the result in the new _currentSum property. Then the current result at any point in time can be requested with the this.result method.

Stage 2 Comments

What is interesting here is that by simply re-using one single step in the step definitions (the Then step) in both the addition and the subtraction features, this drives change all the way down the chain: from the step definitions to the World to our Calculator class. On the whole it results in us having a more realistic (real world) calculator - one which obviously now supports two features instead of one.

Third feature: Chaining multiple operations (aka Stage 3)

So the last stage sees us adding a feature specification for multiple chained operations - that is the ability to add more than two consecutive numbers, subtract numbers, all in the same single operation (e.g. 3 + 6 + 25 - 15 + 77 - 154). As before, let's first update our code to this stage.

  $ git checkout Stage3
  $ npm test

You should see something like:

  // ... lot of yellow stdout ...

  9 scenarios (6 undefined, 3 passed)
  37 steps (17 undefined, 10 skipped, 10 passed)

Tests are broken :o

It's your turn to make them pass

Features

Now we're really pumping out the features. The new feature is defined in features/multiple_operations.feature. We can see that we're adding many new scenarios where we chain more operations.

Worthy of mention here is the And steps. We haven't used these before, but they do what you'd expect, they allow us to add or chain more When events. They can also be used in Given and Then steps.

Apart from that, by now the feature definitions should be fairly self-explanatory.

Step Definitions

Our step definitions (features/support/steps.js) now undergo some more refinements. Because previously we were thinking about addition and subtraction as automic operations, it made sense to break them into a this.setArguments and this.add or this.subtract methods. e.g, we wanted to add "a" and "b" to get "c", so we called this.setArguments(a,b) and then called this.add.

But now things have changed, and we realise that if we consider adding and subtracting in the wider context of chained operations, then an add of "a" and "b" is really the same as adding "a" (onto our current sum, whatever that is) and then adding "b". Conversely, subtracting "a" from "b" is the same as adding "b" (onto our current sum, whatever that is) then subtracting "a".

Therefore for Addition, in Stage2 where we used to have:

  When('I add {int} and {int}', function (arg1, arg2) {
    this.setArguments(arg1, arg2);
    this.add()
    ...

in Stage3 we will have:

  When('I add {int} and {int}', function (arg1, arg2) {
    this.add(arg1)
    this.add(arg2)
    ...

Therefore for Subtraction, in Stage2 where we used to have:

  When('I subtract {int} from {int}', function (arg1, arg2) {
    this.setArguments arg2, arg1
    this.substract()
    ...

in Stage3 we will have:

  When('I subtract {int} from {int}', function (arg1, arg2) {
    this.add(arg2)
    this.substract(arg1)
    ...

The this.add and this.subtract methods have to be refactored to take a parameter of the number being added or subtracted, whereas they used to take no parameters and just caused the operation to execute (based on a previous this.setArguments call).

So that is the main change to existing code, and we also have to add methods for When('then add {int} and When('then subtract {int} which should be fairly obvious - just one argument now.

World

Our World object (features/support/world.js) now gets a little simpler actually. We can get rid of the this.setArguments method - we need it no more. Then we just have to add the new parameters for this.add and this.subtract.

Calculator Model

These changes keep flowing through and actually the Calculator class (models/calc.js) will become a little simpler (less code) but more sophisticated as well. Again we have to remove setArguments, this is no longer needed. We can then also remove the _arg1 and _arg2 class properties.

We again can refactor the add and subtract methods to take the number being added or subtracted as a parameter, and updating the _currentSum.

Stage 3 Comments

What is interesting in this final stage is that the final set of features, once again, cause us to re-think how the addition and subtraction work. We are left with a "working" calculator that is more sophisticated (real world), has less code, and supports more features. As we can see in the Stage3 features file, we can start to specify all sorts of scenarios, including clearing the calculator mid-stream.

Final Comments

One thing that makes it interesting (to me), and what I've tried to demonstrate here, is that we can see how the system being tested becomes more sophisticated as more features are added. I don't just mean that it becomes more complex, that more code is added, I mean that adding more feature specs forces (or at least strongly encourages) us to write a system that evolves quickly to approximate what we think the final system should look like.